This August 2019 photo courtesy of Atlantic Productions shows the latest image of the bow of RMS Titanic which rests 12,500 feet (3,810 meters) below the Atlantic Ocean, and 370 miles (595kms) south of Newfoundland, Canada. - Photo by HO /AFP/Getty Images
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MONTREAL Researchers from Universite du Quebec a Rimouski are trying to solve the mystery about whether a letter in a bottle washed up in New Brunswick in 2017 is from a young victim of the Titanic.
The letter was purportedly written by Mathilde Lefevbre, a 12-year-old schoolgirl from northern France who was a passenger in third class and among the poorer people on the ill-fated passenger liner.
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It is dated April 13, 1912, the day before the ship sank.
The letter, written in French, reads: “I am throwing this bottle into the sea in the middle of the Atlantic. We are due to arrive in New York in a few days. If anyone finds it, tell the Lefebvre family in Lievin,” referring to a commune in northern France.
A New Brunswick family discovered the bottle in June 2017 on a beach in Hopewell Rocks, in the Bay of Fundy, more than 105 years after the letter’s alleged date. They asked academics to investigate whether the document is original.
Manon Savard, an archeologist and geographer from UQAR, said chemical analysis of the glass bottle and radio carbon dating on the cork and bits of paper used to seal the bottle yielded dates that were consistent with the early 20th century.